The Linguistic Atlas of New England project, begun in 1889 and published 1939-1943, documented two major dialect areas of New England, which are related to the history of the settling and dispersal of European settlers in New England with successive waves of immigration.

The collection contains handwritten transcription sheets (carbon copies) in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with some explanatory comments in longhand. Drawn from over 400 interviews conducted by linguists in communities throughout New England in the 1930s, these records document the geographic distribution of variant pronunciations and usages of spoken English. The material, taken from fieldworkers’ notebooks (1931-1933), is arranged by community, then by informant, and also includes audiotapes of follow-up interviews (1934); phonological analyses of informants’ speech; character sketches of informants by fieldworkers; fieldworkers’ blank notebook; and mimeograph word index to the atlas (1948).

Born in Wales in 1833, Richard E. Lloyd found great financial success after migrating to Vermont in the 1850s. Beginning as the proprietor of a dry goods business in Fair Haven, Vermont, he diversified and expanded his holdings, eventually becoming a senior partner in the slate manufacturing firm Lloyd, Owens, and Co.

The daybooks from Richard Lloyd’s dry goods firm include numbered accounts of customers (many with Welsh surnames), lists of items purchased, price per measure, forms of payment (cash, goods, services, credit, making clothes), and the goods sold. Lloyd dealt in a typical range of goods found in a rural general store, including fabrics, ready-made clothes, eggs and dairy products, fruits and nuts, garden seeds, cutlery and tinware, and jewelry.

Subjects

Consumer goods--Vermont--Fair Haven--Prices--19th century

Fair Haven (Vt.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Fair Haven (Vt.)--History--19th century

General stores--Vermont--Fair Haven

Welsh Americans--Vermont--Fair Haven--19th century

Contributors

Lloyd, Richard E.

Types of material

One of four young sociologists who joined the faculty at UMass Amherst in the years after the Second World War, John Manfredi carried the entire load of teaching theory from 1948 to 1967. A native of Philadelphia and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (BA 1942), Manfredi came to Amherst after completing an MA at Harvard in 1948, teaching while simultaneously completing his dissertation, “The Relationship of Class-Structured Pathologies to the Contents of Popular Periodical Fiction, 1936-1940” (Harvard, 1951). A specialist in social theory and cultural systems, he taught anthropology for several years and both his research and teaching revolved around the sociology of religion and art. His best know work, The Social Limits of Art, appeared in 1982, three years before his retirement. Manfredi died in February 1993.

Consisting of essays and course notes from his days as a graduate student at Harvard, the John Manfredi collection documents the training and early professional work of a sociologist. Notable among these are materials relating to classes offered by eminent figures such as Talcott Parsons, Carle C. Zimmerman, and P.A. Sorokin.

Revolutionary organizers, writers, and theorists, Eric Mann and Lian Hurst Mann have been active in the struggle for civil rights for decades. The son of Jewish Socialist and labor organizer from New York, Mann came of age during the early phases of the Civil Rights movement and after graduating from Cornell (1964), he became field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality. Increasingly radicalized through exposure to Black revolutionary nationalists, Mann took part in the Newark Community Union Project and became a leader in anti-imperialist opposition to the war in Vietnam as a New England regional coordinator for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later with the Revolutionary Youth Movement I — the Weatherman above-ground tendency of SDS. Following a militant demonstration at the Harvard Center for International Affairs late in 1969, Mann was convicted of assault on the basis of perjured testimony and sentenced to two years in prison. An organizer of his fellow prisoners even behind bars, he was “shipped out” often in the middle of the night, from prison to prison, spending the last year at Concord State Prison. After being released early in July 1971, he continued his prison activism through the Red Prison Movement. At the same time, as a writer, he earned a national audience for his book Comrade George: an account of the life, politics, and assassination of Soledad Brother George Jackson. Feeling himself at a low point in his radical career, Mann met Lian Hurst while vacationing in Mexico during the summer 1974. Hurst, a leader in the Berkeley Oakland Women’s Union, architect, and a strong Socialist Feminist, soon became his partner in life and politics, and Mann left Massachusetts to join with her in Berkeley. Hurst lead a group of women from BOWU who formed a “Thursday night group” and left the organization with the polemic, “socialist feminism is bourgeois feminism” all of whom moved towards integrating women’s liberation and Marxism-Leninism. At her urging, the two took part in Marxist Leninist party building, becoming union organizers with the United Auto Workers, and eventually moving to Los Angeles. Hurst was elected shop steward by her fellow workers as a known revolutionary. There, Mann led a campaign to keep the Van Nuys assembly plant open (1982-1992) — captured in his book, Taking on General Motors. They joined the August 29th Movement and its successor, the League of Revolutionary Struggle. They left LRS in 1984. In 1989, Mann and veterans of the GM Van Nuys Campaign formed the Labor/Community Strategy Center, which has been a primary focal points for their work ever since, helping to build consciousness, leadership, and organization within communities of color. Hurst became editor of AhoraNow, an innovative bilingual left publication that featured articles by Black and Latino working class leaders and helped initiate the center’s National School for Strategic Organizing. In 2003 Hurst wrote, “Socialist Feminism: Thoughts After 30 Years” for AhoraNow, a critical re-engagement of those important debates from an historical perspective after a 30 year reunion of BOWU’s key leaders. Mann’s latest book is Playbook For Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer. Hurst and Mann continue to write and agitate in the cause of revolutionary change, particularly for oppressed communities of color.

The Mann-Hurst collection contains the records of two lives intertwined with one another with the cause of liberation of Black and Latino communities, women, and an internationalist pro-socialist anti-imperialism. Containing a nearly complete set of publications, the collection also contains early materials on Lian Hurst’s work with BOWU and the both Eric and Lian’s time as organizers for the UAW and their participation in the August 29th Movement and League of Revolutionary Struggle. Of particular interest are a series of letters home written by Eric during his imprisonment. The collection contains comparatively little on Hurst and Manns’ more recent work with the Labor/Strategy Strategy Center or Bus Riders Union

Subjects

August 29th Movement

Berkeley Oakland Women's Union

Communists--California

Feminism

International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America

Born in Gomel, Russia in 1912, Lazar Mayants earned a PhD in chemistry (1941) from the Karpov Institute for Physical Chemistry and a Doctor of Science in physics and mathematics (1947) at the Lebedev Institute for Physics (FIAN), both in Moscow. With primary research interests in theoretical molecular spectroscopy, applied linear algebra, quantum physics, probability theory and statistics, and the philosophy of science, he began his career as Professor and Chair of the Theoretical and General Physics Departments at Ivanovo, Saratov, and Smolensk Universities in Russia. Mayants came to University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1981 as a visiting professor, becoming an Adjunct in 1987. He taught at UMass for over six years, often forgoing a paycheck as a result of decreased funding in the sciences. He remained in Amherst until his death in November 2002.

The Mayants Papers are comprised of professional correspondence, drafts of articles, personal and financial records, and notes for research and teaching. Mayants’s dissertation from the Lebedev Institute for Physics is also included with the collection.

Subjects

Physics--Research

Quantum theory

University of Massachusetts Amherst--Faculty

University of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Physics

Contributors

Author, English professor at the University of Massachusetts, and alumnus of the same school. Includes correspondence, typescript manuscripts, poems, travel journals, and class materials including syllabi and lecture notes.

Once hailed by Sports Illustrated as “the most powerful man in sport,” Mark Hume McCormack directly engineered the growth of money and media in modern professional sport. After graduating from the College of William and Mary with a B.A. in French and receiving a law degree from Yale, McCormack joined the Cleveland-based law firm of Arter, Hadden, Wykoff, and Van Duzer in 1957. An accomplished golfer in college, McCormack remained close to the game, qualifying for both the British and U.S. amateur championships and the U.S. Open in the 1950s. While working as a lawyer and entrepreneur, he leapt to prominence by striking a deal with a legendary handshake to represent Arnold Palmer in 1960. With that auspicious start, McCormack soon added golfers Gary Play and Jack Nicklaus to his roster of clients, followed by a long succession of notable international sports figures and celebrities from Formula-1 driver Jackie Stewart, Olympic skier Jean-Claude Killy, tennis stars Billy Jean King and Pete Sampras to Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and models Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen. McCormack quickly added corporations and sporting events such as Wimbledon, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, and Rolex as clients in sponsorship, licensing, event management, and media deals. These clients became the basis of IMG Worldwide, Inc., forming one of the largest management, media, and marketing companies in the world. The author of a dozen books on management and sport, McCormack became a famous figure himself as a business man, negotiator, and deal-maker before passing away in 2003.

With a growing collection of approximately 2,500 boxes of records that represent the personal life of Mark H. McCormack and the intertwined corporate records of IMG, the McCormack Papers provide an inside look at the last 50 years of the business of professional sport. The collection contains correspondence, memos, drafts, reports, contracts, research files, marketing materials, and memorabilia. The collection is arriving in stages and is currently being processed. Some materials are restricted.

Forest pathologist and arboriculturist Malcolm Arthur McKenzie was born in Providence, Rhode Island in April 1903. After attending Brown University (PhD Forest Pathology, 1935), he worked successively as a field assistant for the United States Forest Service forest products lab, as an instructor at the University of North Carolina, and finally with the University of Massachusetts Shade Tree Laboratory. He conducted important research on the diseases of shade trees, including Dutch elm disease, wood decay, and tree pests, as well as related issues in tree hazards in public utility work and municipal tree maintenance.

The McKenzie Papers document McKenzie’s association with the UMass Shade Tree Lab, along with some professional correspondence, research notes and publications, and McKenzie’s dissertation on willows.

Gift of Francis W. Holmes, June 2000

Subjects

Plant pathology

Shade trees

University of Massachusetts Amherst--Faculty

University of Massachusetts Amherst. Botany Department

University of Massachusetts Amherst. Shade Tree Laboratory

Contributors

Merchant who owned a dry goods and general merchandise shop in Easton, New York. Daybook representing purchases by hundreds of customers (some of whom were from among the region’s Quaker community) primarily from Easton, South Easton, and Cambridge, listed by surname, as well as lists of a wide variety of dry goods including some textiles identified by town of origin.

Subjects

Akin, E. N

Beadle, D. S

Cambridge (N.Y.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Dingman, Henry

Dry-goods--Prices--New York--Easton--19th century

Easton (N.Y.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Foster, Rhodon

General stores--New York--Easton

Hoag, Isaac

Hunt, Daniel

McKie, George

Quakers--New York (State)--Cambridge

Quakers--New York (State)--Easton

Starbuck, Hiram

Thomas, D. C

Whiteside, Abbey

Contributors

McKie, Neil

Types of material

A pioneer in African American history, August Meier was a model of an engaged academic, a prolific writer, active participant in the civil rights struggle, and staunch member of the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE. While pursuing graduate work at Columbia under Henry Steele Commager, Meier taught at a succession of Historical Black Colleges, including Tougaloo (1945-1949), Fisk (1953-1956), and Morgan State (1957-1964). His dissertation, completed in 1957, became the first of eleven books he wrote or edited, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915 (1963), with much of later work conducted in collaboration with Elliott Rudwick and John Bracey. Meier joined the faculty at Kent State University in 1967 and remained there until his retirement in 1993. His much-anticipated monograph on the history of the NAACP had not been completed at the time of death in 2003.

Organized in two discrete parts, the Meier collection bookends a long career in the study of African American history. The first part of the collection is centered on Meier’s association with the Pioneer Youth summer camp in Rifton, N.Y., and his growing consciousness of the fundamental problems of race and class in American society, with some materials from his wartime years as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. The second part of the collection includes books collected by Meier during his academic career, mostly on African American history and culture. Titles range from works on the Civil Rights movement to literature and poetry of the late nineteenth century and Harlem Renaissance, works on slavery and antislavery, race theory, the South, and African American education and religion.